It a Pelican?
From the 1930s, one of Grumman's traditional niches had been building amphibious airplanes, which inevitably were named after water fowl. Over the years, the amphibians had grown in size, from the single-engined Duck to the twin-engined Goose, through the larger Widgeon, and then to the still larger post-war Mallard. The latter was something of a transitional aircraft - it had a strong appeal for corporate and wealthy individual clients (e.g., the Aga Khan bought one), but it did not penetrate the regional airline market as deeply as Grumman had hoped.
Grumman proved nimble. It quickly decided to extrapolate the Mallard's design into a larger, higher capacity, longer-range version, initially designated the Pelican, which made its first test flight late in 1947:
First Pelican test flight, October 24, 1947
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Ironically, enlarging the design did not help it penetrate the coastal airline market - in the late 1940s, there were too many cheap war-surplus transports available, and too many small airfields they could use. Besides, other than at an amusement park, would you want to ride in something called the Pelican?
On the other hand, the new aircraft was remarkably well suited for rescue missions.
